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Weekly unemployment claims edge back down

Weekly unemployment claims edge back down

Vermont Business Magazine Weekly unemployment claims fell modestly, wiping out the small increase from the previous week. Now that the tumult of the holidays is over, the weekly claims report is back to a more regular pattern. For the week of February 3, 2018, there were 468 claims, 121 more than than they were the previous week and 94 fewer than they were a year ago. Altogether 6,052 new and continuing claims were filed, a decrease of 148 from a week ago, and 764 fewer than a year ago. For most weeks of 2017, including the last several months, claims have registered below the year before.

For UI claims last week by industry, Services, which typically accounts for most claims, totaled only 35 percent. Manufacturing fell to only 47 claims (10 percent) and Construction fell slightly (but still at a relatively high 35 percent of total claims).

Vermont's unemployment rate for December was 2.8 percent. This reflects a one-tenth drop from the revised November, October and September rates (2.9 percent), as all the major indicators slightly improved. SEE STORY.

On July 1, 2017, the state reduced taxable rates for individual employers according to their experience rating. The rate reduction cut the highest UI tax rate from 8.4 percent to 7.7 percent, and the lowest rate from 1.3 percent to 1.1 percent. Additionally, July 1 marked the sunset of a provision that required claimants to wait one week between the time they were determined eligible for benefits to when they could collect those benefits.

NOTE: Employment (nonfarm payroll) - A count of all persons who worked full- or part-time or received pay from a nonagricultural employer for any part of the pay period which included the 12th of the month. Because this count comes from a survey of employers, persons who work for two different companies would be counted twice. Therefore, nonfarm payroll employment is really a count of the number of jobs, rather than the number of persons employed. Persons may receive pay from a job if they are temporarily absent due to illness, bad weather, vacation, or labor-management dispute. This count is based on where the jobs are located, regardless of where the workers reside, and is therefore sometimes referred to as employment "by place of work." Nonfarm payroll employment data are collected and compiled based on the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, conducted by the Vermont Department of Labor. This count was formerly referred to as nonagricultural wage and salary employment.